Saving Michael
by Mistiec
Summary: Selene has been saving Michael from the first moment they met.


**Saving Michael  
**By Misty  
Rating: PG-13  
Teaser: Selene has been saving Michael from the first moment they met.  
Notes: I used to write these underworld vignettes, and this is just another in those lines. Unapologetic foof. Cause for some reason? Selene/Michael makes me melt.

The others can be found on my profile.

--

To define them as domesticated would have been foolish and a lie.

Selene never considered vampires to be beasts. To do so would place them on some level akin to the lycans. But she understood certain aspects of her own nature, the bloodlust and her need to destroy.

She wasn't human, she wasn't a beast, but she had come to realize that there were beasts in every species. That it lay residing in their spirit, their blood, infecting their will and desire and control.

Selene was a woman of discipline, but not constraint. She was impulsive and emotional, where others were not, and she supposed it meant something, because she was alive, and they were not.

She had stopped trying to make sense of it long ago, because it didn't make sense, it wouldn't make sense. She had been alone, except for Victor, her entire existence, and her life as a human were now just nightmares and memories, flitting in and out of her consciousness.

She wasn't alone anymore, and a part of her still hated Michael for that.

Selene had been selfish in her thirst for blood. No one had shared her bed or her thoughts with her revenge and her justice. It had been an empty existence, but it had been hers, uncomplicated but for the moments she lived for - bullets torn into flesh, euphoria rushing in with blood, eyes closing, vivid in cerulean blue.

With a stare and a curious blood type, he had taken all that way, and changed it, deformed it, and suddenly she wasn't alone anymore.

Selene had been saving Michael from the first moment they met. In that time, he had changed from an insignificant human to a catalyst, a symbol, a beast.

Selene had never liked petty emotion. She was a woman of honor and loyalty, and it was her loyalty to some that forced her to betray others, never aware that the only one who had been betrayed was herself.

She trusted nothing and no one, until she began to trust Michael, and the day that happened, she could no longer trust herself.

It was a frightening thought and at the same time exhilarating, the emotions that ran through her she would admit to no one, not even herself.

Michael, who gave her human love, loved her with a human heart, made love to her the way a human would, with words and kisses and soft touches. Fast and soft and rough and dirty, until she became addicted to it, intoxicated by him, until she needed to feel him, every morning, tasting the sun on his flesh and hearing the beat of his heart.

She could never ignore that he was a lycan. Michael would never forget it. It was easier for him, to deal with the vampire's cursed existence. Perhaps he saw her as an example. She made no qualms about her need for blood, gave him no sympathy the first time he flinched at the taste, the first time she could see the bloodthirst overtake him.

And her sacrifices - a sun she weirdly craved and a warmth she received from him, were not his. He left her sleeping and spent his time in the sun - sometimes she hated him for that, as well.

But the lycan... The lycan inside Michael frightened him.

He was a child, who wanted her love and demanded it, who wanted her heart and bled it from her, marking her with fangs and hating himself each and every time he did. He wanted blood and he wanted murder and death because it was in his nature. Because he was a beast.

But Michael's soul was human. Michael had been a doctor. Michael had wanted to save lives.

Now, he was losing himself.

They lived in shadows and emerged to fight, keep themselves alive in a war that centered around them. Despised by the Lycans because of her, and chased by the vampires, Selene had come to learn to avoid violence, to keep them alive until they couldn't hide anymore.

But they always found them. They always fought, and Michael, with his blue skin and dark, animal eyes, had begun to relish.

She found him, once, in a pool of sewer water, black claws wrapped around the neck of a vampire, face buried in his neck, feasting on the nearly dead man.

He saw her, amidst his growls and chomps, and her face must have betrayed the horror even she was surprised was there, because he dropped the vampire, looked into her eyes, and walked away from her.

The man he killed was a DeathDealer. She carried two guns with her, one filled with silver, the other, with the lycan bullets.

Out of respect, she finished the man quickly. Then she followed Michael.

When she found him, keeling over in shock and heaving against a wall, she said nothing of the incident.

He wanted her to tell him it would be all right. She could not.

--

Selene harbored no love in her heart, but she was filled with Michael.

Selene had often pitied Michael, his humanity, but it must have infected her.

She used to only tolerate his embraces, nearly felt suffocated at the overwhelming feel of his heat behind her.

One day, after the incident, she turned in his arms, until her palms slid over his smooth chest, until her chest rested against his warm skin, until she could hear his heartbeat.

"What are you doing?" he asked, alert and wary.

He wasn't asleep. He never seemed to, anymore.

"Listening," she answered, eyes closed, heightening her senses, listening for the thump. Thump. Thump-Thump.

He was quiet for a long time, unsure of what she meant by it, because Selene was spontaneous and emotional, but she never wasted her actions or her words.

To him, her listening to his heartbeat would mean something.

Maybe he understood, when he tightened his hold on her and breathed, a loud sigh, exhaling breath, speeding up his pulse.

"Do you ever get scared?"

She didn't respond, preferred instead to keep listening, slide her cheek against the barely there fur of his chest.

"You've never been frightened of anything, have you?"

She stilled, dark eyes fluttering open, chin tilting up to rest against his left pectoral. "If you believe that," she said calmly, "Then you've never really known me."

Time had given Michael bitterness. "You're not exactly an open book."

He had beautiful eyes, in his human form. Dark and crystal blue - like a vampire's in a rush of euphoria. It had been so long since Selene considered anything but death beautiful.

She kissed him, reaching up and slanting her mouth hotly against his, possessive and powerful, tenting legs over thighs, fingers buried in blonde locks.

Fingers bruised against her hips, because Michael was always passionate and almost never gentle, and she relished that, moaned into firm lips and sucked his tongue willingly into hers.

--

Dried blood had been licked away clean. She could taste the copper on her teeth, and her tongue ran against it absently, fingers smoothing at the spot on his neck, rubbing at the already healing wound.

"You never answered my question."

She froze, ear against his heartbeat, attempting to drown out everything else.

"I was frightened," she said simply, because she wasn't ashamed of it, not anymore. "When I saw you filled with silver nitrate, dying in my arms." The statement was surprising, she could see the bewilderment at such an admission, but she only shook her head. "I had pledged to save your life, even to the expense of my own. In that I failed."

"No," he answered, the thumb of his left hand tender now, against her cheek. "You saved me."

"I made you into what you are," she said matter-of-factly. "What you despise."

His hand stilled. "It's what you despise."

"Michael, you don't understand," she snapped, slapping his hand away, nearly spitting in her disgust. "What I wanted to save was the human. Instead I killed the human and left a beast in it's place. You blame me for it. I know you do."

He didn't say a word, and in his unspoken response, she received her answer. She was resigned to it, but still, she pushed out of his arms, moved away from his warmth.

She didn't have far to go. Restricted by daylight, her only escape was the living room, a small place covered in guns and weapons.

She knew he would follow her. She was resigned to it. Resigned to him, and in her bitterness, she allowed her selfish hatred to consume her, for a moment.

The moment her fangs sank into Michael she had not only killed him, but herself. Her purpose, her drive, her uncomplicated motivation.

Now, her entire existence seemed centered on saving Michael.

If only to save herself.

"I do blame you."

She closed her eyes, did not allow him her reaction, but jerked the round into her gun and lifted the clip out, a rhythmic ritual.

"I blame you because I loved you with that man, with all of him, and you never returned it. You never said it back. And then you bit me and you changed me, and now that love for you is the only thing that kept that part of me in. I know what I am, now. I know what I can do. I know the only reason I don't lose myself completely is because of you. And sometimes I want to. It's the only way I can get rid of the guilt."

"You can leave if you like," she said methodically, without emotion, eyes on her guns, always on her guns. "Free us both."

"Do you know why I still hang on? Why I feel the guilt? Look at me."

She obeyed only because she needed to see his face, to take in his rigid body, his long blonde hair kissed by sunlight, human and feral all at the once.

"I do it," he continued, voice nearly a fevered whispered, "Because I'm afraid you won't love me if I lose who I am."

It was stupid that she swallowed.

"I do it," he finished, "Because I'm afraid that I'll forget how to love you."

It was a bleak future, but it was all she had ever known, and she should have been resigned to it.

She wasn't.

"You need it," she said suddenly, eyes on her guns. "You need it, Michael, because you crave it. Like you crave blood and you crave violence, you crave that humanity that is bleeding from you. Perhaps what you said is true. Perhaps you'll forget how to love me if you forget who you are, but I will never allow it."

It was what she lived for now, saving Michael. Any way she knew how. It frightened her and she no longer trusted herself because of it, but she trusted her faith in Michael. At least for the moment, that was enough.

He loved her, as the beast and as the human, because she saw his heart break in his eyes, a window to his soul.

"Tell me you love me," he whispered, begged, and what he asked she had never given. "Tell me that no matter what happens, you'll always love me."

Selene had long ago forgotten how to love, until she died with Michael, and his humanity infected her with his warmth.

He needed the words, more than he had needed then ever before, and it was because of that she looked at him, and told him simply, "I love you. And I will love you always."

It was almost anticlimactic, the resulting acceptance that came with the statement. She had resisted it for so long, and now, with her statement hanging in the air, as if it hadn't even been said, it seemed simply just another consequence of the change. Like his cravings.

Perhaps she had received new cravings of her own.

He stared at her, stunned at first, and then suddenly, he smiled, soft and boyish, leaning against the doorway in relief.

She managed a smile of her own, small and barely there, because she had forgotten how to smile and to attempt was awkward and uncomfortable.

Then she went back to her guns, because what had happened was not new, or different, or unique in anyway. She had done it to save Michael.

Selene had been selfish in her thirst for blood. No one had shared her bed or her thoughts with her revenge and her justice. It had been an empty existence, but it had been hers, uncomplicated but for the moments she lived for - bullets torn into flesh, euphoria rushing in with blood, eyes closing, vivid in cerulean blue.

With a stare and a curious blood type, he had taken all that way, and changed it, deformed it, and suddenly she wasn't alone anymore.

She had been saving Michael from the moment she had met him, and instead of hating him, she loved him for it.

She needed his humanity as much as he did, but she would never admit that to him. She would admit she loved him, give up that secret to protect the first, the real truth: in that saving Michael, she was also saving herself.

FIN


End file.
